Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

Brygida Gasztold A Narrative Inquiry into Canadian Multiculturalism: Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels TransCanadiana 6, 207-225 2013 Brygida Gasztold Koszalin University of Technology A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO CANADIAN MULTICULTURALISM: FUGITIVE PIECES BY ANNE MICHAELS Résumé : La loi sur la citoyenneté canadienne de 1947 a fait ressortir le besoin de se distancer de l’identité britannique et d’en définir sa propre canadienne. De nombreuses théories ont établi les liens entre le concept de canadianité et les caractéristiques d’un territoire donné et ont défendu l’idée de la survie des victimes de la colonisation comme essentielle pour la construire (Atwood, 1972) ou ont indiqué “la mentalité de garnison” (Fry, 1964) comme caractéristique de l’imagination canadienne. Considérer le Canada comme une “nation sur mesure” (“A Nation by Design”) (Zolberg, 2006) suppose qu’il existe plus d’une manière d’être Canadien. L’une des variables du discours multiculturel est la notion de récit, qui est non seulement un outil de construction et de transmission du savoir mais également il reflète la structure sociale et conceptuelle dont il ressort. Le roman d’Anne Michaels Fugitive Pieces (1996) (traduction française : La Mémoire en fuite de 1998) représente tel récit ancré dans l’expérience juive dont le contexte plus global façonne les modèles idéologiques propres à la diversité canadienne. L’auteure associe une perspective ethnique à un lieu culturel du Canada multiculturel et, ce faisant, elle crée un récit représentatif de l’ethnicité juive et de la pluralité culturelle canadienne. L’auteure de cet article examine la façon dont Michaels emploie les éléments du discours narratif reflétant aussi bien que rejettant la notion de multiculturalisme. Le caractère épisodique du récit et la représentation du temps comme interrompu reflètent le contraste possible entre sa construction et sa representation ; entre la politique institutionnelle canadienne et sa pratique. Le concept d’adoption ainsi que de famille de substitution défient une histoire linéaire et officielle promouvant d’autres récits que ceux légitimés par la noblesse du sang ou par l’appartenance au groupe dominant. Les lacunes dans le récit et les histoires inédites revèlent un processus très complexe d’édification d’une nation, qui doit tenir compte des premières 208 Brygida Gasztold étapes marquées de l’expérience de l’invasion et de la colonisation tandis que les omissions dans le texte et dans le récit révèlent non seulement les difficultés de définition de l’identité canadienne mais aussi d’acceptation des modèles déjà existants. Early Canadian immigration history is characterized by its exclusionary nature, with the category of race being the primary factor for the denial of entrance, and English and French charter groups central to Canadian history. It was only later that the aboriginals and ethnic cohorts gradually began to gain importance. Present-dayCanada struggles with the ways to implement an officially desirable model of society, which recognizes and addresses its transcultural and multicultural agenda. The 1946 Canadian Citizenship Act prompted the need to part with the provisional British identity in order todefine a Canadian one. Together with the Multiculturalism Policy (1971) and the Canadian Human Rights Act (1977), the 1988 Act for the Preservation and Enhancement ofMulticulturalism in Canada laid a legislative foundation for the contemporary vision of Canadian multiculturalism. Canada may aptly be referred to as a “nation by design,” to borrow Anthony D. Smith’s term (99-122), since the officially endorsed shift towards inclusive immigrant policy has become the foundation for the present version of Canadianness. Various theories have linkedthe concept of Canadian identity(such as that of a Northerner)to the features of a particular landscape, promoted the idea of survival of colonial victims as key to its construction (Atwood), signaled “garrison mentality,” as characteristic for the Canadian imagination (Fry), imagined Canada as a ‘mosaic’ society (Porter), or applied the metaphor ofthe “borderland” to define contemporary Canada (New). Numerous attempts to grasp the essence of Canadian distinctiveness presuppose more than one way to be Canadian. Multiculturalism, thus articulated, is an idea which tries to address cultural differences in the form of an official policy. It is an ideology which provides an image of a desired national representation. As a political ideology, multiculturalism “has provided Canada with an identity, and a national distinction from the United States, where the emphasis has been on the idea as well as the practice of a melting pot, where immigrants and refugees become, culturally and linguistically, fully absorbed into the dominant Anglo American ways of life and worldview” (Ghosh and Abdi 105). To account for a variety of ethnic, racial, and religious groups that co- exist in a Canadian model of multiculturalism, Janice Kulyk Keefer provides a metaphor of a “kaleidoscope”; the kaleidoscope suggests ongoing process rather than fixed and finished product. The user of the kaleidoscope can make out of separate pieces, none of which is more privileged A narrative inquiry into Canadian multiculturalism … 209 than any other, a changing and infinitely variable pattern precisely because the shifting parts are held together by the cylinder that contains them. And that cylinder, passed from hand to hand, we may liken to Canada itself, with its wilderness and farms, its towns and cities, its people, and the values enshrined in our Charter of Rights (16). Through the dialogue between various social groups, at present, as well as with their pasts, multiculturalism must entail the concept of change. Arnold Itwaru draws attention to the mutual interdependence of cohabiting social groups: “No ethnic group existing under the denomination of a macrological cultural power different from itself maintains its traditional uniqueness for very long” (16). It is no longer a dialogue between English and French Canada, but a polylogue, which accounts for stories important for different ethnic communities. Even though the ideology of multiculturalism has officially been propagated in Canada since the introduction of the Multiculturalism Act in 1988, the ongoing debate queries the existing status quo. There are still differences between the two Canadian “solitudes” – Anglophone and Francophone. For example, ethno-cultural minority groups in English-speaking Canada are called “ethnic groups,” and in French-speaking Quebec “cultural communities.” Moreover, “Quebec is the only province to have rejected the federal Policy of Multiculturalism (…), and to have adopted a policy of Intercultural Education” (Ghosh and Abdi 93). A Canadian model of multiculturalism had to tackle the privileged discourse, which addressed only one, the English-Canadian, variant of Canadian identity: “the English-Canadian historiographic orthodoxy was characterized by four aspects: institutional – responsible government; biographic – great makers of Canada; imperialist–British superiority; and gendered and racialized – male and White” (Hoerder 114). At the federal level, one of the common criticisms is that multiculturalism has “endangered the common loss of Canadian culture and has therefore promoted the formation of ghettoes and enclaves, (…) removed the possibility of a center for those who wish to escape an ethnicity and assimilate into a national identity” (Spergel 12). By de- privileging the centre, which stands for a prescribed model of national identity,in favour of diversity, contemporary Canadianness fosters all the different wayswhich represent its multiplicity. One of the elements of the multicultural discourse is the concept of narrative, which is not only an important tool in the construction and transfer of knowledge, but which also reflects the social and conceptual structure from which it emerges. Works of culture, such as literature, provide a viable medium to express and problematize the nature of national identity, and their examination may help to define this, otherwise, elusive concept. Narratives, 210 Brygida Gasztold which are written or read, just like stories, which are told or listened to, inform the narrator/speaker/listener and that is why they are important elements in creating both individual and group identity. “Stories help to make sense of, evaluate, and integrate the tensions inherent in experience: the past with the present, the fictional with the ‘real,’ the official with the unofficial, personal with the professional, the canonical with the different and unexpected” (Dyson and Genishi 242-243). Literature helps us to contemplate and understand changing reality through the lens of an individual and unique experience that is representative of cultural diversity. Homi Bhabha explains the complex nature of this diversity: The aim of cultural difference is to re-articulate the sum of knowledge from the perspective of the signifying singularity of the ‘other’ that resists totalization–the repetition that will not return as the same, the minus-in-origin that results in political and discursive strategies where adding-to does not add-up but serves to disturb the calculation of power and knowledge, producing other spaces of subaltern signification (312). By propagating stories that are essential to collective identity, literary texts function as signifiers of national identity. They do not only demonstrate the ways to express the essence of national identity,

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